So I am really happy to announce another major codec addition to Fedora Workstation 27 namely the addition of the codec called AAC. As you might have seen from Tom Callaways announcement this has just been cleared for inclusion in Fedora.

For those not well versed in the arcane lore of audio codecs AAC is the codec used for things like iTunes and is found in a lot of general media files online. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding and was created by the MPEG working group as the successor to mp3. Especially due to Apple embracing the format there is a lot of files out there using it and thus we wanted to support it in Fedora too.

What we will be shipping in Fedora is a modified version of the AAC implementation released by Google, which was originally written by Frauenhoffer. On top of that we will of course be providing GStreamer plugins to enable full support for playing and creating AAC files for GStreamer applications.

Be aware though that AAC is a bit of an umbrella term for a lot of different technologies and thus you might be able to come across files that claims to use AAC, but which we can not play back. The most likely reason for that would be that it requires a AAC profile we do not support. The version of AAC that we will be shipping has also be carefully created to fit within the requirements for software in Fedora, so if you are a packager be aware that unlike with for instance mp3, this change does not mean you can package and ship any AAC implementation you want to in Fedora.

I am expecting to have more major codec announcements soon, so stay tuned